Separating the Roles of DDC's in a XenDesktop Farm

Each Desktop Delivery Controller machine in the farm can potentially become the farm master in an election process. This election process can be influenced by settings on the various server machines, and one (or more) machines can be indicated as preferred as being farm master, and other machines only take on the farm master role if the preferred machines are unavailable. This preference indication is achieved by use of registry entries on the various server machines. Each machine can be configured to have one of four possible settings:

• Master – servers with this setting are preferentially chosen as the farm master. Often, only one server in the farm would have this setting.

• Backup - servers with this setting are preferentially chosen as the farm master when the master server is unavailable.

• Member - servers with this setting are normally not the farm master, but can assume the farm master role when none of the master or backup servers are available.

• Slave Only - servers with this setting are not eligible to be the farm master.

To configure a server machine to one of these settings, perform the following steps.

Caution! This procedure requires you to edit the registry. Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Citrix cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk. Back up the registry before you edit it.

1. Set the HKLM\Software\Citrix\IMA\RUNTIME\UseRegistrySetting DWORD registry entry to 1

2. Set the desired master ranking value in the HKLM\Software\Citrix\IMA\RUNTIME\MasterRanking DWORD registry entry to one of the following values:

• 1 indicates ‘Master’
• 2 indicates ‘Backup’
• 3 indicates ‘Member’
• 4 indicates ‘Slave Only’

3. Restart the server